


Acceptance

by DrPearlGatsby



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, During Canon, F/M, Inukag Week 2020, Kagome contemplates life, background MirSan, drabble-ish, in which pretty much everyone pretends not to have feelings, set in an indeterminate time before the end of the series, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24625468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrPearlGatsby/pseuds/DrPearlGatsby
Summary: For not the first time, Kagome wonders glumly what will be the end of all this. It seems too easy to imagine that she’ll always be the girl who cheated time—will she know when the well is closing? When it happens, which side will she be on?(A quiet moment during breakfast in the Feudal Era.)
Relationships: Higurashi Kagome & InuYasha, Higurashi Kagome/InuYasha
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Acceptance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for InuKag Week 2020 Day 1: Acceptance (but posted late!).
> 
> I haven't written for Inuyasha in approximately a million years, but it's the first fandom I wrote for (I probably have 200+ pages in Word documents of mostly unpublished fics dating all the way back to high school--!) and I'm feeling nostalgic (and maybe a little worried) with the announcement of the new series. Here goes nothing?

Kagome upends the bottle over her palm, but only one Ibuprofen rattles out. She shakes the bottle again to confirm— _empty_. “Huh,” she mutters to herself, capping the bottle and putting it back into her pack before swallowing the pill with her breakfast. She’ll have to go home soon; just one more thing she’s running low on.

“Inuyasha’s back,” Shippo announces before any of the humans can see him, and soon enough the hanyou leaps into the clearing and stops at their camp.

“We’ll continue on northeast,” Inuyasha announces. “So hurry up and finish eating.”

Kagome rolls her eyes but doesn’t say anything, watching as Inuyasha takes the last wooden bowl and dumps his portion of the food into it. It’s simple food—a porridge, barely boiled enough to soften up the grains and seasoned with mushrooms. Kagome knows there isn’t much protein in the dish, but she’s out of dried fish, too, and they haven’t caught much of anything recently.

_Life is so easy in the modern world_ , she thinks. No need to worry about whether some demon with a jewel shard has chased off all the river fish. There’s Ibuprofen for headaches and muscle aches and shampoo to make your hair smell and look nice, plastic water bottles with filtration straws and antiseptic spray for when you fall and scrape your knee. For not the first time, Kagome wonders glumly what will be the end of all this. It seems too easy to imagine that she’ll always be the girl who cheated time—will she know when the well is closing? When it happens, which side will she be on?

Kagome keeps her eyes lowered and focused on her breakfast as she tries to imagine losing all connection to her time. There are things she won’t miss about school—handling the elaborate lies of ailments she’s supposedly suffered from, pretending to care about all the things her friends are interested in, pretending that she hasn’t been facing dangerous, life-or-death situations every day. But then she thinks of saying goodbye to her family, knowing she’d never see them again. Never have to defend Inuyasha from Grandpa’s poorly-written sutras, never yell at Sota for bursting into her room or hug her mother on the way out the door. It’s enough to make her tear up, but she quickly lifts her eyes skyward, determined to stop herself from crying. She takes a couple of slow, deep breaths before she returns to eating.

Across the campsite, Sango leans down to pat Kilala on the head, reminding Kagome briefly of herself and Buyo. Miroku eyes Sango over his breakfast—not the leering expression he gives to all the girls but something more contemplative; Kagome is certain that the monk cares for Sango as Sango cares for him, though it frustrates her to see them always dancing around each other. Between them, Shippo takes a sloppy bite of porridge and then turns to say something to Sango, his mouth full. And at the edge of camp, Inuyasha has finished his breakfast and is resting against a tree with his eyes closed, frowning. He’s always like this, ready to go before anyone else, anxious to move forward. _Humans need time_ , Miroku had scolded him once, but it hadn’t stopped him from sulking like this. One of his ears twitches in the breeze, and Kagome ducks her head again, smiling down into her bowl. _He’ll get over it_.

The other chance, the other worry—what if she’s separated from _this_ time instead. What if one morning she wakes up in her modern world and finds she can no longer travel through time, left only with a dirty backpack, a handful of photographs, and scars: one on her side where the shikon jewel fell, one the sacred tree where once Inuyasha rested in enchanted sleep.

Miroku laughs then, loud and sudden, and Kagome glances up to see Shippo scowling at him. Inuyasha’s eyebrow quirks in annoyance, though he keeps his eyes shut. He’s gotten some better at controlling his frustration. He’s learned to show and exercise compassion, disguised though it may be as exasperation. And even though they bicker, she can always expect him to catch her when she stumbles or falls.

_I love him_ , Kagome thinks, a thought that isn’t new but is still no less raw than the first time she had it. Her heart aches out of love for the half-demon and the traveling companions who have become more like family, and now the tears are back, pooling in both eyes and spilling over before she can do anything to stop them. Her mother and Sota and Grandpa can get on without her, but Inuyasha…

His ears twitch again, then his nose, and he opens one eye to look in her direction, his brow furrowed in worry. Kagome realizes he can smell her tears, so she gives him a tight smile; but before she can even move to wipe the moisture from her face he’s leapt from his spot and landed gracefully beside her.

“Oi, Kagome,” he says quietly, folding his arms. “You hurt or something?”

“I’m fine,” she says, discreetly wiping at her ears with one hand. _I would choose you_ , she thinks. _Between your time and mine, for all the Ibuprofen in the world. I’ll always choose Inuyasha_.


End file.
